Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 97
Summoned the neighbourhood to attest the wrong,
Made noisy protest he was murdered, — stoned
And burned and drowned and hanged, — then broke away,
He and his wife, to tell their Rome the rest.
And this you admire, you men o’ the world, my lords?
This moves compassion, makes you doubt my faith?
Why, I appeal to . . . sun and moon? Not I!
Rather to Plautus, Terence, Boccaccio’s Book,
My townsman, frank Ser Franco’s merry Tales, —
To all who strip a vizard from a face,
A body from its padding, and a soul
From froth and ignorance it styles itself, —
If this be other than the daily hap
Of purblind greed that dog-like still drops bone,
Grasps shadow, and then howls the case is hard!
So much for them so far: now for myself,
My profit or loss i’ the matter: married am I:
Text whereon friendly censors burst to preach.
Ay, at Rome even, long ere I was left
To regulate her life for my young bride
Alone at Arezzo, friendliness outbroke
(Sifting my future to predict its fault)
“Purchase and sale being thus so plain a point
“How of a certain soul bound up, may-be,
“I’ the barter with the body and money-bags?
“From the bride’s soul what is it you expect?”
Why, loyalty and obedience, — wish and will
To settle and suit her fresh and plastic mind
To the novel, nor disadvantageous mould!
Father and mother shall the woman leave,
Cleave to the husband, be it for weal or woe:
There is the law: what sets this law aside
In my particular case? My friends submit
“Guide, guardian, benefactor, — fee, faw, fum,
“The fact is you are forty-five years old,
“Nor very comely even for that age:
“Girls must have boys.” Why, let girls say so then,
Nor call the boys and men, who say the same,
Brute this and beast the other as they do!
Come, cards on table! When you chaunt us next
Epithalamium full to overflow
With praise and glory of white womanhood,
The chaste and pure — troll no such lies o’er lip!
Put in their stead a crudity or two,
Such short and simple statement of the case
As youth chalks on our walls at spring of year!
No! I shall still think nobler of the sex,
Believe a woman still may take a man
For the short period that his soul wears flesh,
And, for the soul’s sake, understand the fault
Of armour frayed by fighting. Tush, it tempts
One’s tongue too much! I’ll say — the law’s the law:
With a wife, I look to find all wifeliness,
As when I buy, timber and twig, a tree —
I buy the song o’ the nightingale inside.
Such was the pact: Pompilia from the first
Broke it, refused from the beginning day
Either in body or soul to cleave to mine,
And published it forthwith to all the world.
No rupture, — you must join ere you can break, —
Before we had cohabited a month
She found I was a devil and no man, —
Made common cause with those who found as much,
Her parents, Pietro and Violante, — moved
Heaven and earth to the rescue of all three.
In four months’ time, the time o’ the parents’ stay,
Arezzo was a-ringing, bells in a blaze,
With the unimaginable story rife
I’ the mouth of man, woman, and child — to wit
My misdemeanour. First the lighter side,
Ludicrous face of things, — how very poor
The Franceschini had become at last,
The meanness and the misery of each shift
To save a soldo, stretch and make ends meet.
Next, the more hateful aspect, — how myself
With cruelty beyond Caligula’s
Had stripped and beaten, robbed and murdered them.
The good old couple, I decoyed, abused,
Plundered and then cast out, and happily so,
Since, — in due course the abominable comes, —
Woe worth the poor young wife left lonely here!
Repugnant in my person as my mind,
I sought, — was ever heard of such revenge?
— To lure and bind her to so cursed a couch,
Such co-embrace with sulphur, snake and toad,
That she was fain to rush forth, call the stones
O’ the common street to save her, not from hate
Of mine merely, but . . . must I burn my lips
With the blister of the lie? . . . the satyr-love
Of who but my own brother, the young priest,
Too long enforced to lenten fare belike,
Now tempted by the morsel tossed him full
I’ the trencher where lay bread and herbs at best.
Mark, this yourselves say! — this, none disallows,
Was charged to me by the universal voice
At the instigation of my four-months’ wife! —
And then you ask “Such charges so preferred,
“(Truly or falsely, here concerns us not)
“Pricked you to punish now if not before? —
“Did not the harshness double itself, the hate
“Harden?” I answer “Have it your way and will!”
Say my resentment grew apace: what then?
Do you cry out on the marvel? When I find
That pure smooth egg which, laid within my nest,
Could not but hatch a comfort to us all,
Issues a cockatrice for me and mine,
Do you stare to see me stamp on it? Swans are soft:
Is it not clear that she you call my wife,
That any wife of any husband, caught
Whetting a sting like this against his breast, —
Speckled with fragments of the fresh-broke shell,
Married a month and making outcry thus, —
Proves a plague-prodigy to God and man?
She married: what was it she married for,
Counted upon and meant to meet thereby?
“Love” suggests some one, “love, a little word
“Whereof we have not heard one syllable.”
So, the Pompilia, child, girl, wife, in one,
Wanted the beating pulse, the rolling eye,
The frantic gesture, the devotion due
From Thyrsis to Neæra! Guido’s love —
Why not provençal roses in his shoe,
Plume to his cap, and trio of guitars
At casement, with a bravo close beside?
Good things all these are, clearly claimable
When the fit price is paid the proper way.
Had it been some friend’s wife, now, threw her fan
At my foot, with just this pretty scrap attached,
“Shame, death, damnation — fall these as they may,
“So I find you, for a minute! Come this eve!”
— Why, at such sweet self-sacrifice, — who knows?
I might have fired up, found me at my post,
Ardent from head to heel, nor feared catch cough.
Nay, had some other friend’s . . . say, daughter, tripped
Upstairs and tumbled flat and frank on me,
Bareheaded and barefooted, with loose hair
And garments all at large, — cried “Take me thus!
“Duke So-and-So, the greatest man in Rome —
“To escape his hand and heart have I broke bounds,
“Traversed the town and reached yo
u!” — Then, indeed,
The lady had not reached a man of ice!
I would have rummaged, ransacked at the word
Those old odd corners of an empty heart
For remnants of dim love the long disused,
And dusty crumblings of romance! But here,
We talk of just a marriage, if you please —
The every-day conditions and no more;
Where do these bind me to bestow one drop
Of blood shall dye my wife’s true-love-knot pink?
Pompilia was no pigeon, Venus’ pet,
That shuffled from between her pressing paps
To sit on my rough shoulder, — but a hawk,
I bought at a hawk’s price and carried home
To do hawk’s service — at the Rotunda, say,
Where, six o’ the callow nestlings in a row,
You pick and choose and pay the price for such.
I have paid my pound, await my penny’s worth,
So, hoodwink, starve, and properly train my bird,
And, should she prove a haggard, — twist her neck!
Did I not pay my name and style, my hope
And trust, my all? Through spending these amiss
I am here! ‘Tis scarce the gravity of the Court
Will blame me that I never piped a tune,
Treated my falcon-gentle like my finch.
The obligation I incurred was just
To practise mastery, prove my mastership: —
Pompilia’s duty was — submit herself,
Afford me pleasure, perhaps cure my bile.
Am I to teach my lords what marriage means,
What God ordains thereby and man fulfils
Who, docile to the dictate, treads the house?
My lords have chosen the happier part with Paul
And neither marry nor burn, — yet priestliness
Can find a parallel to the marriage-bond
In its own blessed special ordinance
Whereof indeed was marriage made the type:
The Church may show her insubordinate,
As marriage her refractory. How of the Monk
Who finds the claustral regimen too sharp
After the first month’s essay? What’s the mode
With the Deacon who supports indifferently
The rod o’ the Bishop when he tastes its smart
Full four weeks? Do you straightway slacken hold
Of the innocents, the all-unwary ones
Who, eager to profess, mistook their mind? —
Remit a fast-day’s rigour to the Monk
Who fancied Francis’ manna meant roast quails,
Concede the Deacon sweet society,
He never thought the levite-rule renounced, —
Or rather prescribe short chain and sharp scourge
Corrective of such peccant humours? This —
I take to be the Church’s mode, and mine,
If I was over-harsh, — the worse i’ the wife
Who did not win from harshness as she ought,
Wanted the patience and persuasion, lore
Of love, should cure me and console herself.
Put case that I mishandle, flurry, and fright
My hawk through clumsiness in sportsmanship,
Twitch out five pens where plucking one would serve —
What, shall she bite and claw to mend the case?
And, if you find I pluck five more for that,
Shall you weep “Now he roughs the turtle there?”
Such was the starting; now of the further step.
In lieu of taking penance in good part,
The Monk, with hue and cry, summons a mob
To make a bonfire of the convent, say, —
And the Deacon’s pretty piece of virtue (save
The ears o’ the Court! I try to save my head)
Instructed by the ingenuous postulant,
Taxes the Bishop with adultery (mud
Needs must pair off with mud, and filth with filth) —
Such being my next experience: who knows not —
The couple, father and mother of my wife,
Returned to Rome, published before my lords,
Put into print, made circulate far and wide
That they had cheated me who cheated them?
Pompilia, I supposed their daughter, drew
Breath first ‘mid Rome’s worst rankness, through the deed
Of a drab and a rogue, was bye-blow bastard-babe
Of a nameless strumpet, passed off, palmed on me
As the daughter with the dowry. Daughter? Dirt
O’ the kennel! Dowry? Dust o’ the street! Nought more,
Nought less, nought else but — oh — ah — assuredly
A Franceschini and my very wife!
Now take this charge as you will, for false or true, —
This charge, preferred before your very selves
Who judge me now, — I pray you, adjudge again,
Classing it with the cheats or with the lies,
By which category I suffer most!
But of their reckoning, theirs who dealt with me
In either fashion, — I reserve my word,
Justify that in its place; I am now to say,
Whichever point o’ the charge might poison most,
Pompilia’s duty was no doubtful one.
You put the protestation in her mouth
“Henceforward and forevermore, avaunt
“Ye fiends, who drop disguise and glare revealed
“In your own shape, no longer father mine
“Nor mother mine! Too nakedly you hate
“Me whom you looked as if you loved once, — me
“Whom, whether true or false, your tale now damns,
“Divulged thus to my public infamy,
“Private perdition, absolute overthrow.
“For, hate my husband to your hearts’ content,
“I, spoil and prey of you from first to last,
“I who have done you the blind service, lured
“The lion to your pit-fall, — I, thus left
“To answer for my ignorant bleating there,
“I should have been remembered and withdrawn
“From the first o’ the natural fury, not flung loose
“A proverb and a byeword men will mouth
“At the cross-way, in the corner, up and down
“Rome and Arezzo, — there, full in my face,
“If my lord, missing them and finding me,
“Content himself with casting his reproach
“To drop i’ the street where such impostors die.
“Ah, but — that husband, what the wonder were! —
“If, far from casting thus away the rag
“Smeared with the plague, his hand had chanced upon,
“Sewn to his pillow by Locusta’s wile, —
“Far from abolishing, root, stem, and branch,
“The misgrowth of infectious mistletoe
“Foisted into his stock for honest graft, —
“If he, repudiate not, renounce nowise,
“But, guarding, guiding me, maintain my cause
“By making it his own (what other way?)
“ — To keep my name for me, he call it his,
“Claim it of who would take it by their lie, —
“To save my wealth for me — or babe of mine
“Their lie was framed to beggar at the birth —
“He bid them loose grasp, give our gold again:
“Refuse to become partner with the pair
“Even in a game which, played adroitly, gives
“Its winner life’s great wonderful new chance, —
“Of marrying, to-wit, a second time, —
“Ah, did he do thus, what a friend were he!
“Anger he might show, — who can stamp out flame
“Yet spread no black o’ the brand? — yet, rough albeit
“In the act, as whose bare feet feel embers scorch.
“What grace were his, what gratitude were mine!”
Such protestation should have been my wife’s.
Looking for this, do I exact too much?
Why, here’s the, — word for word so much, no more, —
Avowal she made, her pure spontaneous speech
To my brother the Abate at first blush,
Ere the good impulse had begun to fade —
So did she make confession for the pair,
So pour forth praises in her own behalf.
“Ay, the false letter,” interpose my lords —
“The simulated writing, — ’twas a trick:
“You traced the signs, she merely marked the same,
“The product was not hers but yours.” Alack,
I want no more impulsion to tell truth
From the other trick, the torture inside there!
I confess all — let it be understood —
And deny nothing! If I baffle you so,
Can so fence, in the plenitude of right,
That my poor lathen dagger puts aside
Each pass o’ the Bilboa, beats you all the same, —
What matters inefficiency of blade?
Mine and not hers the letter, — conceded, lords!
Impute to me that practice! — take as proved
I taught my wife her duty, made her see
What it behoved her see and say and do,
Feel in her heart and with her tongue declare,
And, whether sluggish or recalcitrant,
Forced her to take the right step, I myself
Marching in mere marital rectitude!
And who finds fault here, say the tale be true?
Would not my lords commend the priest whose zeal
Seized on the sick, morose, or moribund,
By the palsy-smitten finger, made it cross
His brow correctly at the critical time?
— Or answered for the inarticulate babe
At baptism, in its stead declared the faith,
And saved what else would perish unprofessed?
True, the incapable hand may rally yet,
Renounce the sign with renovated strength, —
The babe may grow up man and Molinist, —
And so Pompilia, set in the good path
And left to go alone there, soon might see
That too frank-forward, all too simple-strait
Her step was, and decline to tread the rough,
When here lay, tempting foot, the meadow-side,
And there the coppice called with singing-birds!
Soon she discovered she was young and fair,
That many in Arezzo knew as much, —
Yes, this next cup of bitterness, my lords,
Had to begin go filling, drop by drop,
Its measure up of full disgust for me,
Filtered into by every noisome drain —